It was perhaps the greatest Heisman field in the history of that award. It included a generational quarterback and a guy everyone thought would be. It had the most talented receiver the game had ever seen. It had the most productive rusher college football had ever seen. And Twenty years ago today the award for the “most outstanding player in college football” finally went to a primarily defensive player. He was just that good.

In 1997, two-way stars like Tom Harmon were a thing of the past or it was something “cute” that guys like Gordie Lockbaum did in D2 football. As Warren Sapp correctly pointed out a few years earlier, the bronzed Heisman statue has a player carrying the ball, not swatting it down.

Charles Woodson challenged that paradigm. You didn’t need to be a senior anymore to win the award. You didn’t need to be a quarterback or a running back, either. The trophy is engraved thusly: “The outstanding College Football Player In The United States.” The instructions given to voters are to choose…

The outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard work.

It doesn’t say anything about being an offensive MVP; but that was the paradigm. Paradigms had changed before in the history of this award—it used to be so Domer biased that QB Paul Hornung won it in 1956 while going 2-8 and throwing 13 INTs to 3 TDs (Jim Brown finished third). It says outstanding.

Woodson was. Leave aside the highlight reel and look at the effect he had on that defense. Michigan’s D spent most of that season in a Cover 1 with the free safety either shaded over the side opposite Woodson, or running around in a robber. Students made a shirt (now available on the MGoBlogStore) that noted “75% of the Earth is covered by water, the rest is covered by Woodson.” They weren’t far off. Ask any coach if he thinks he could get away with this:

Back in 1997, few in America believed the 1,000 voters had finally figured out what that truly meant, especially when they had a nice, easy senior career candidate who “deserved” it for turning down the NFL and virtually repeating his 1996 performance.

also also not that it should matter but just in case “undefeated” Nebraska tries to stake a bogus claim to a championship that shoulde be Michigan’s and Michigan’s only, a struggle vs unranked team ought to take care of that, and lo and behold: #3 Nebraska 27, Colorado 24

Back in 1997, there was no B1G Conference Championship Game. That meant THE GAME between Michigan and Ohio State was going to be for all the marbles – sort of.

It was #1 UM (10-0) going against #4 OSU (10-1). It was essentially for the Rose Bowl, with a slight twist. If Michigan won, they would be the outright Big Ten champs and go to the Rose Bowl. If Michigan lost and Penn State defeated Wisconsin and Michigan State -- there would be a three-way tie for the Big Ten title (with OSU & PSU) -- Michigan would still go to the Rose Bowl under the Big Ten tie-breaker rule, unless Ohio State was ranked #1 or #2 in either major poll, in which case the Rose Bowl would be obligated to take OSU.

[Ed-Seth: This being the 20th anniversary of the 1997 National Championship, Michigan historian Dr. Sap offered to revisit a game a week so you can re-live it all in real time. These articles are part-story, part videos so make sure you watch those.]

A team is a team, a win is a win, and it’s hard to find fault in a team that wins 38-3. But after a brilliant opening game against an expected national power, Michigan did not exactly thrash an overmatched opponent like they were expected to. The offensive line could not get much push against an overmatched DL. The passing game felt clunky. The defense were playing on their heels. Getting past their big opener might have revised expectations to three losses instead of the usual four, but watching them the next week you’d think it would take a miracle machine to take down the monsters on the back end of the schedule. But then, the Baylor game was also the moment you realized Michigan might have one of those. Offense, defense, or special teams, when the Wolverines needed a big play they could get one. It wasn’t luck. It was the most outstanding player in college football. It was Charles Woodson. And it was totally unfair.

After looking so good against Colorado the week before and moving up in the national Rankings to #8, the game against Baylor was supposed to be no contest. While it pretty much was, looking back, it also proved to be a microcosm of the 1997 season for Lloyd Carr’s team.

Sure Michigan won, 38-3, but to say that the Maize and Blue didn’t look as crisp and as sharp as they did against the Buffaloes was the understatement of the year. The defense held up their end of the bargain by not giving up a touchdown for the second straight game. Even though Chris Howard was moving the chains and freshman Anthony Thomas was moving the pile, the offense was getting bogged down with penalties and dropped passes. It was painfully evident that there was no playmaker on that side of the ball who could hit the homerun. The Special Teams were anything but, as they dropped a snap from a punt, missed a field goal and Charles Woodson even fielded a punt inside the UM 5-yard line and was tackled for no gain. There was plenty of work to do coming out of this game, as the Wolverines looked nothing like a National Championship team at this point in the season.

Don't tell the SEC, but Charles Woodson has been on something of a satellite camp tour of his own lately, crossing the country to meet fans and talk wine. Woodson's the proprietor of Charles Woodson Wines, and he and director of operations Rick Ruiz have been holding events where fans get a chance to taste some of the company's offerings (like the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon, which made Wine Spectator's 2014 Top 100 list) and purchase autographed bottles of said wine. Woodson and Ruiz were in Ann Arbor for an event at the new Plum Market near North Campus yesterday, and I had the opportunity to sit down with Woodson for a few minutes to talk about some of his memories of Michigan.

If you're beating yourself up because you missed the event yesterday you should stop, but you're going to need to cancel your plans for this afternoon: Charles will be at the Plum Market in West Bloomfield (6565 Orchard Lake Rd.) from 4-6PM; there's no tasting event today, but you can purchase a bottle of the 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon, get it autographed by Woodson at no additional cost, and ask that burning question you've had since '97.

What are some of your favorite memories from your time at Michigan?

"My favorite memories? I don't know. I mean, of course it all revolves around football, you know. [laughs] But really it was, let's say memories of dorm rooms all of us stayed in, because most of us were in West Quad or South Quad. So it was just the times that we all spent together in the dorms. We were all kind of close knit, especially your class. The times we spent together in our rooms, whether we were partying or whatever it was, it was always great."

The [annual West Quad v. South Quad] snowball fight?

"Snowball fight, mmhmm. And then of course the games. My first time running out in '95, running onto the field and kind of losing my breath that first game because I had been in the Big House before but never as a player, and all of a sudden I'm a player and it's like 'oh, wow.' Kind of the magnitude of it hit me. Then of course the Ohio State game with a chance to go to the Rose Bowl, winning that game, the punt return, and the rose in the mouth. I'd say that's five things right there."

In that game, did you allow that receiver a free inside release to bait Stanley Jackson into throwing an interception in the endzone?

"Well, it wasn't deliberate to let him inside, but it was deliberate to undercut him because it was in the endzone and you're always taught, you know, in the endzone the guy's not running a deep route- there's nowhere to go. So you undercut the route and the quarterback threw it right to me, so it worked out."

Did you have a favorite defensive play call or coverage that you guys ran when you were in college?

"No, I didn't. I mean, it was pretty simple what we did. Either I was in man-to-man or it was Cover 3 for the most part. But I played on the wide side of the field most of the time so no, I didn't have a favorite call."

Was there any receiver you had a bigger rivalry with in college than David Boston?

"Uh, no. Yeah, he was the biggest. He was the one that talked the most noise, you know, on that team. He was their star receiver and of course me being on defense, it was kind of a natural thing. So yeah, he would have been my biggest competition."

How did you get into wine and winemaking?

"So I spent a lot time in Napa Valley as a result of being picked there. The Oakland Raiders' training camp was in Napa Valley, and so as a result of being there three and a half-four weeks every training camp I used to spend a lot of time in the Valley at different restaurants just kind of watching people interact with wine, and I became very interested in it. I decided a few years after that that I would get into it."

I attended my first Michigan game in 1994, at the tender age of six. One year later, Charles Woodson made his debut in Maize and Blue.

Yesterday, Woodson announced his impending retirement. In the interim, he put together arguably the greatest career by a defensive player in football history. Those of us lucky enough to watch him at Michigan are hardly surprised.

I could talk about how Woodson changed the game of football at the college and NFL level, how he became the archetype and the prototype of a spread-killing defensive back. Today, though, I'd rather remember how he changed the games in my backyard. In my first couple years in Michigan, I'd run through the yard as Tyrone Wheatley or Tim Biakabutuka, scoring touchdowns against imaginary defenders. After seeing so many athletic feats of this ilk, however...

...I spent much more time crouching down, backpedaling, and jumping imaginary hitch routes. Woodson made defense cool. How could you not want to be this guy?

As Woodson's Michigan career wore on, imitating his greatest moments required an increasingly versatile imagination. Doing so also had some unintended consequences. My mother always wondered why we had so much trouble growing a patch-free lawn in the backyard. My attempts to replicate cuts like this didn't help the cause.

Then, of course, there was his most famous moment as a Wolverine.

Throw the ball as high as you can, catch it clean, take off towards the fence, cut up towards the house, cut back to the fence, then make sure not to trample the garden/bench while sprinting up the imaginary sideline. I did that more times than I could count.

With Woodson, though, some moments transcended imitation even by the most imaginative of grade-schoolers. I could not fly 15 feet in the air, so I didn't attempt his Michigan State interception. I could not float for an eternity, so I was content to leave his final collegiate pick as a memory.

20 years after he first arrived in Ann Arbor, Woodson is still making awe-inspiring plays. Just two days ago, the 39-year-old met 220-pound James Starks—ten years his junior—in the open field; while Starks had a full head of steam, Woodson's perfectly placed shoulder jarred the ball loose. I watched the play unfold on my television, and while I didn't head to the nearest park to replay it, the thought crossed my mind.

As I write this, I'm sitting on the couch in my parents' house, the same I house from which I walked to the Big House with my dad on so many football Saturdays growing up, with the very backyard in which I tried with all my might to be Charles Woodson. We're sitting down to dinner soon. While sports are rarely the foremost topic of conversation in the Anbender household, there's no doubt Woodson's retirement will come up; the only question is how long we'll swap stories once it does.

Perhaps, once the food has settled, I'll sprint aside that fence one more time.

Jabrill Peppers was constantly surrounded by cameras and sound recorders, but he answered every question with candor typically reserved for one-on-one interviews. Below he addresses the Woodson comparison, playing offense, defense, and special teams, and critics of the program. Note: the following questions were from a media scrum and aren’t MGoQuestions.

On deleting his Twitter:

“Camp, I don’t want any distractions. I don’t want any distractions from camp.”

Where’d you get the idea? Someone else do it and you said ‘I should do this’?

“No, it’s just for me, man. These past couple months I’ve noticed that they look at my Twitter a lot.”

You’ve been vocal on lots of issues.

“Yeah, so for me it was just a kind of thing where I don’t want anything that can put a negative connotation on or anything that they can spin or do anything with. We just as a whole are going to go complete darkness. Let them speculate what they want- how good we are, how good we aren’t. We don’t really care what anyone else thinks. We care what the guy next to us thinks. We care what our coaches think, what our family thinks. All of the outside outliers, you know, we could really care less about. We just want to put the ball down and play football, you know. That’s it.

“We didn’t come here to worry about the media or how good they think we are. The only thing that I would tell people is this is Michigan and this is always going to be Michigan. That’s it.”